an, when
insolently attacked in law by the scum of the earth, could not convert
the cause into a question of the longest purse, and stick in the skirts
of his adversary till he had reduced him to beggary.

Mr. Tyrrel, however, was by no means so far engrossed by his law-suit,
as to neglect other methods of proceeding offensively against his
tenant. Among the various expedients that suggested themselves, there
was one, which, though it tended rather to torment than irreparably
injure the sufferer, was not rejected. This was derived from the
particular situation of Hawkins's house, barns, stacks, and outhouses.
They were placed at the extremity of a slip of land connecting them with
the rest of the farm, and were surrounded on three sides by fields, in
the occupation of one of Mr. Tyrrel's tenants most devoted to the
pleasures of his landlord. The road to the market-town ran at the bottom
of the largest of these fields, and was directly in view of the front of
the house. No inconvenience had yet arisen from that circumstance, as
there had always been a broad path, that intersected this field, and led
directly from Hawkins's house to the road. This path, or private road,
was now, by concert of Mr. Tyrrel and his obliging tenant, shut up, so
as to make Hawkins a sort of prisoner in his own domains, and oblige him
to go near a mile about for the purposes of his traffic.

Young Hawkins, the lad who had been the original subject of dispute
between his father and the squire, had much of his father's spirit, and
felt an uncontrollable indignation against the successive acts of
despotism of which he was a witness. His resentment was the greater,
because the sufferings to which his parent was exposed, all of them
flowed from affection to him, at the same time that he could not propose
removing the ground of dispute, as by so doing he would seem to fly in
the face of his father's paternal kindness. Upon the present occasion,
without asking any counsel but of his own impatient resentment, he went
in the middle of the night, and removed all the obstructions that had
been placed in the way of the old path, broke the padlocks that had been
fixed, and threw open the gates.

In these operations he did not proceed unobserved, and the next day a
warrant was issued for apprehending him. He was accordingly carried
before a meeting of justices, and by them committed to the county gaol,
to take his trial for the felony at the next assizes. M